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Australian Natural History T H E AWARD WINNING ��V /�'1� Australian Natural History T H E AWARD WINNING ��V /�'1� V) � 4 W I L D L I F E '·· ; � • S E R I E s Experienceall the danger, excitementand adventureof life in the wild! • Rare and archival footage • First class narrators, including Peter Ustinov, Orson Welles, David Niven and Henry Fonda. • Endangered species • Superb photography • A living library of natural history to delight all ages! Also available in this series: • Sharks • Gorilla • Tiger • Cameraman • Orangutan • Safariby Balloon • Lions of Estosha • Humpbacks • Elephants • Flight of the Snowgeese • The Parenthood Game • Come into my Parlour • World of the Beaver • The Leopard that changed its spots • Subtle as a Serpent • Eagle Come Home • Killer Whale • The Winged Messenger • The World you never see • The Waterhole Available from all leading retailers and video stores VIDEO SELECTION SURVIVAL ANGLIA A U I T Ill A l I A Ltfflllf'd E D I T O ll I A L ANHAustralian Natural History GARBAGE:A Spring 1990 Volume 23 Number6 GROWING CONCERN Published by The Australian Museum Trust BY FIONA DOIG 6-8 College Street, EDITOR Sydney, NSW 2000 Phone: (02) 339 8111 Trust President: Robyn Williams NEVER REALISED HOW MUCH RUBBISH sound rubbish when these are full? And Museum Director: Desmond Griffin Australians accumulate until I visited existing sites in Sydney have an esti­ EDITOR East Africa. Things like takeaway food mated life expectancy until only 1997. I Fiona Doig packagingI and plastic bags are rare luxu­ can imagine the outcries from residents SCIENTlFIC EDITOR ries. Old tyres are custom-made into that don't want the new garbage sites in Georgina Hickey, B.Sc. thongs; children produce imaginative toys their suburb. But it is still our rubbish and CIRCULATION MANAGER from coathangers, bits of string and cans. we are responsible for it! Cathy McGahey These people have so much less than We aren't given incentives to minimise ART DIRECTION us-yet are so much more resourceful. waste. There is little information and few Run Run Run Design Pty Ltd All bottles in East and Central Africa facilities. A very successful composting EDITORIAL ASSISTANT are reused. I was chased down a street in collection was set up in Holland that re­ Jennifer Saunders Tanzania. by an irate shop owner in­ duced the total garbage content of house­ TYPESETTING censed at my gall in removing a soft-Orink hold waste to such an extent that Excel Imaging PtyLtd bottle from the premises. Three burly individual households involved- received a PRINTING men came flying at me making sure I large cut in their garbage rates. A re­ Dai Nippon Printing Co., Tokyo, Japan never forgot the error of my ways. markably simple and worthwhile scheme. ADVERTISING This episode made me realise just how So why aren't we doing it? Such a scheme Wendy Symonds dependent we have become on garbage. could reduce up to a half of our total Lisa Rawlinson Imagine going back to deposit bottles. We domestic waste sent for landfill. (02) 339 8234 think we are being 'environmentally We don't always have to see garbage SUBSCRIPTIONS sound' by recycling glass. It strikes me as as waste. Often it can be a useful by­ Annual subscription (4 issues) silly to return one glass container only to product, an untapped resource. What Within Australia SA30 have it made into another. It might be a about all the methane generated by gar­ Other CountriesSA42 step up from throwing it away, but surely bage dumps (a good energy source that is Two-yearsubscription (8 issues) Within Australia SASS it is cheaper and more efficient to wash a used successfully overseas, and here pre­ Other countriesSA 78 bottle than to melt and remould it! viously)? As methane is a greenhouse gas, New subscriptions can bemade We still have deposit bottles, but only we should use it: the carbon dioxide its by credit card on the ANH toll-free in South Australia. The return rate there combustion generates is less environmen­ hotline 008-028558 or use the fonn in the is 85 per cent, compared with only 25 tally detrimental. The New South Wales back of the magazine. lf it has been per cent in other States. But they are not Waste Management Authority is seeking removed, send cheque or money order to the reused, just recycled. Imagine what a dif­ customers to establish facilities near land­ address above,made payable to the ference a large company like Coca Cola fills to utilise this cheap energy source. 'Australian Museum'. could make if it brought in a worldwide The amount of garbage is not our only Subscribersfrom other countries please policy that all its bottles are reusable. concern. The damage it does to the en­ note that money must bepaid in That's the kind of green image companies vironment is critical. Not just directly. It Australian currency. should be seeking-a genuine commit­ is the energy and resources used to pro­ All material appearing in Australian ment to reducing waste, not just unre- duce material that goes straight in the bin Natural History is copyright. j Reproductionin whole or in part is not 1 ated token sponsorships . La rge that is the issue. A ma or concern is plas­ permittedwithout written authorisation companies have the power to lead the tics, well known to be harmful to sea from the Editor. way with such trends and earn them­ life-they can entangle and kill dolphins, Opinions expressed by the authors are selves genuine green reputations. Image seals, fish, birds, and even coral. Plastics their own and do not necessarily is vital and, as it becomes apparent that accumulate and float, and take .:enturies represent the policiesor views of the environmental boom is not just a to break down. Ocean waste is a serious the Australian Museum. phase, more and more businesses will be problem: about six billion kilograms of Australian Natural History is printed on struggling to improve their-or sink. It is waste are discarded annually by ocean­ archival quality paper suitable for inevitable that political pressure will force going vessels and plastic refuse is the library collections. much stricter environmental laws. A com­ most commonly sighted man-made ma­ Published 1990 pany that starts now will be better off terial in the oceans. What is surprising is ISSN-0004-9840 financially in the long term. So why aren't our attitude to plastic-we have one of they doing it? the most durable materials known and we 111111111 Australian Natural History is We may carefully recycle much of our make it into disposable goods! � audited by the Audit Bureau of garbage. But are we generating any less Our society lives and dies by the mass­ _i:AA.i__ Circulations. or simply switching from one kind of dis­ ive accumulation of waste it produces. We Front Cover posable resource to another less detri­ throw away something rather than reuse The Cane Toad is often incorrectly mental one? I wonder if it is any more or return it because to do so is easier. To associated with the method of biological environmentally friendly to keep recyc­ change, we need the kind of incentives pest control. Stringent tests for suitable ling at the same rate of usage to which that encourage shop owners to chase control agents now ensure that the 'Cane we have been accustomed-particulary people down the street to get their bot­ Toad Syndrome' is a thing of the past. Leo when much of it ends up in landfill. What tles back. Incentives in the waste Photo: Meier, Weldon Trannies. do we do with all the environmentally minimisation campaign are vital.• VOLUME 23 NUMBER 6, SPRING 1990 425 C O N T E N T S Articles IN THIS ISSUE BY GEORGINA HICKEY SCIENTIFIC EDITOR NALYSIS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL RESIDUES on stone tools will permit the resol­ ution of longstanding problems in the Acurrent debate about the origins of the Aus­ tralian Aborigines. ANU's Tom Loy is one of the pioneers in the new and exciting methods CONSERVATION AND of residue analysis (see page 4 70). Residue ABORIGINAL LAND analysis has also been used to study the ob­ RIGHTS: WHEN GREEN IS NOT BLACK sidian tools manufactured in West New Most conservationists are also Britain (PNG) before and after the eruption of Mt Witori 3,500 supportive of Aboriginal land rights. But where do years ago. Robin Torrence, Jim Specht (pictured sitting down) conservationists stand, for example, if Aborigines want to and Richard Fullagar from the Australian Museum's Division of mine uranium on their land Anthropology are currently studying the layers of sediment or shoot traditional food in national parks? resulting from a series of volcanic eruptions over the last BY LESLEY HEAD 10,000 years, to find out just how the people's lives there were 448 affected. See their story on page 456. Lesley Head, from Wollongong University, takes a look at the issue of conservation versus Aboriginal land rights. Although conservationists are usually supportive of Aboriginal land rights, their interests are not always the same. This is because conservationists are locked into a romanticised view of Aborigi­ nes and the way they live in their environment. Perhaps it is time we reassess our expectations of our 'natural' environment. Other articles in this issue deal with Charles Darwin' s per­ sonal life (can his constant 'ill health' be explained by a fear of public places?) and the method of biological pest control-it's POMPEIIS IN THE PACIFIC time people stopped connecting this control method with the Sudden falls of volcanic ash disastrous introduction of the Cane Toad.
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